A little more than one year ago, Nancy Taylor’s life was full. She was pregnant with her second child, working 20 hours a week, and enjoying life in McLean with her husband, an Army officer.
Even then, it wasn’t as easy as it looked.
One reason Nancy and Kip Taylor appreciated his assignment as deputy chief of staff personnel for the Army, with an office at the Pentagon, was their access to fertilization treatments at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
Those treatments resulted in two healthy pregnancies for Nancy. One child, Dean, was born before Sept. 11, 2001. The other, Luke, came into world after the date when his father died in a terrorist plot.
Now, a year after losing Kip in the crash at the Pentagon, Nancy still has his “living legacy:” sons Dean, 2, and Luke, born last fall soon after the Pentagon attack. The Army’s office of personnel lost 26 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
“Luke just got his third tooth,” said Nancy Taylor. “It’s just starting to peek through his gums.
“His brother, Dean, will be 3 in December. They have kind of kept me going this past year,” she said.
IN THE ATTEMPT to assuage the grief, Nancy said, she has started a fund in her husband’s name. Its purpose emphasizes the happy result of in vitro fertilization that gave Nancy her husband’s sons.
Now, she wants to help other military families achieve the same result.
With a web site to promote it [www.Kiptaylorfund.com], the fund has raised more than $40,000 to pay the travel and housing costs for military couples who want to get in vitro treatments at Walter Reed, Nancy Taylor said.
The fund pays for travel and lodging for service people who come for fertility treatments. “It helps all service members, whether Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines,” said Nancy Taylor.
Military people “are disadvantaged” because they have to go to a fertilization treatment center, not always available from Army medical centers in remote areas.
“We had both of our sons through IVF at Walter Reed,” she said. “We were blessed that it worked both times.”
“THE PEOPLE I feel really sorry for are the men and women who lost a spouse who don’t have a living legacy for that person. Children are such a loving diversion for me, for all the pain and tragedy of this whole thing.
“It’s got to be so difficult for them. They don’t have a diversion,” Nancy Taylor said. “Those are the couples I feel for. I know they’re out there."
Though her family is in Syracuse, N.Y., Taylor said she wants to stay in McLean, where her children one day will attend Franklin Sherman Elementary School.
“I have lived in this area since 1998. We had been here four and a half years when he was killed,” she said. “I want to be near him, too.”
Although the past week has been a blur of events surrounding the anniversary date of Sept. 11, including a remembrance in Newport, R.I., to honor Naval War College graduates such as her late husband, she said, “Just being a widow can be isolating. Some people avoid you, not knowing what to say.
“A year has gone by. Some people think we don’t want to talk about our spouses, but I very much do. That keeps his memory alive. I always want to hear their memories of Kip,” she said.
“If they just say they miss him, I know that, but I think they are worried like we’re going to start crying, and they don’t want to stir up those emotions.
“I know this will always be with me. I don’t necessarily want it to not be with me. It is a part of us, and of Kip.
“[The] people who didn’t know him, I want to know about him."
If she has seen anything positive in the last year, she said, it’s the patriotism that has emerged since Sept. 11.
“I hope the patriotism stays strong as we deal with terrorism and [related] ongoing issues that are not easily solved,” such as the prospect of war with Iraq.